re drawn over
their heads, so closely as nearly to choke them, and strong bonds were
tied round their legs and arms.

Thus thoroughly disabled, the strong king and his youthful son were
carried through the midst of their own people to the strand and laid
helplessly in the bottom of the waiting boat, which was rowed away with
muffled oars, gliding across the narrow sound to the shore of Fyen. Here
waited a fast-sailing yacht to which the captives were transferred, sail
being set before a favoring wind for the German coast.

The next morning, when the king's attendants were searching for the
missing king, he and his son, still bound and gagged, were landed on a
lonely part of the sea-shore, placed on awaiting horses, and tightly
secured to the saddles, after which they were hurried on at full gallop,
stopping only at intervals to change the armed escort, until the castle
of Danneberg, in Hanover, was reached.

This castle had been loaned by its owner to Count Henry, he having no
stronghold of his own deemed secure enough to hold such important
captives. So roughly had they been treated that when the bonds were
removed from Prince Valdemar, who resembled his mother Dagmar alike in
his beauty and her feebleness, the blood flowed from every part of his
body. Yet, without regard to his youth and sufferings, the cruel captor
shut up him and his royal father in a cold and dark dungeon, where they
were left without a change of clothing and fed on the poorest and
coarsest food.

This, many might say, was a just retribution on King Valdemar, for years
before, when as a prince he had put down the rebellion in Sleswick, he
had seized its chief leader, his namesake Bishop Valdemar, and kept him
for many years in chains and close confinement in the dungeon of Soeborg
Castle, and had later subjected Count Adolf of Holstein to the same fate.
Bishop Valdemar had been released after fourteen years' imprisonment at
the entreaty of Queen Dagmar, and was ever after one of the most bitter
enemies of the Danish king.

But though a bishop and count might be thus held captive, it is difficult
to conceive of a powerful monarch being kept prisoner by a minor noble
for three long years, despite all that could be done for his release.
Nothing could give a clearer idea of the lawless state of those times.
King Valdemar and his son lay wearing the bonds of felons and suffering
from cold and hunger while the emperor and the Pope sought in vain for